Five Ways Rudy Miller Didn't Kill Philip Baldwin
by tatsumaki
Summary: I Want to Go Home!, Son of Interflux. He should put the poor creature out of his misery. Rudy x Mike.


For the Kormanslash International Science Fair challenge on LiveJournal.

1.

Asphyxiation, Rudy decided. That was the only humane thing to do, really. He should put the poor creature out of his misery.

Except that the only miserable person in the room was Rudy himself. Rudy's new roommate was babbling happily about airplanes and time zones and Vancouver International Airport.

"— and that's when the stewardess started crying. So hey, where are you from?"

Rudy wondered what the hotel would do if they found blood on the pillows.

2.

Poison was, unfortunately, out of the question. The Fairmont Hotel, host of the participants of the 2007 Interflux International Undergraduate Science Festival, prepared magnificent buffet meals for the two hundred student competitors, and any attempts to slip something into one of the bite-sized appetizers could have disastrous consequences.

That didn't mean that Rudy didn't consider it.

"So I was making all these art pieces, right? I mean, they weren't anything special, but Mr. Montrose paid me good money for them — not that he really has any sense of the aesthetic, but he was sort of putting me through college, you know? But after awhile, I started to look at the stuff I was flinging on the canvas, and I thought, hey, why does the banana splatter in one way and the cantaloupe in another, when they both went through the same fan?"

Phil paused to munch on a tomato stuffed with some sort of fish paste. Rudy warily eyed his eggplant pasta.

"I think that was it," Phil continued seriously. "That was when I knew I wanted to be a scientist. I wasn't very good at first, though." He shrugged philosophically. "Which was good, because hey, I finally didn't have potential, right?"

Rudy put his fork down. He'd have to look for a vending machine later.

3.

One of the best things about staying in an upscale hotel was the unlimited Internet access in all the rooms, of which Rudy took advantage on the second night to call his parents. He wasn't a gadget junkie, but he had to admit that Internet phone services had their benefits.

He reassured his parents that he wasn't dead, or at least not yet, anyway, and then called Mike. They talked for awhile about school and family and Mike's cousin Sarah who was getting married in the fall, until Phil breezed into the room and flung himself down on his bed.

"Man," Phil moaned, "you would not believe some of the other projects. They're setting it all up in that big ballroom, and I got a look at them, and I'm telling you, all the potential in the world couldn't save me now."

Rudy made the international sign for 'Shut up, I'm on the phone', which incidentally is identical to the sign for 'Please stop talking and leave the room before I punch you in the head'. This was lost on Phil, however, as he was lying face down on his bed and communing with his pillows.

"Is that your roommate?" Mike asked curiously. "Is he okay?"

"Unfortunately," Rudy muttered.

Phil looked up at this, and finally registered the handset Rudy was holding. "Oh, hey, that's so cool! I've always wanted to try net phone!"

Rudy's head was starting to hurt, and he thought of the ibuprofen he'd stashed in the bathroom. "Mike, would you like to talk to my roommate?" Without waiting for a response, he passed the handset to Phil, and escaped to the washroom.

He splashed some water on his face, and lingered until most of the homicidal impulses vanished from his mind. He stepped back into the room just in time to hear Phil say, "Yeah, Rudy's a pretty cool guy. So how long have you two been dating?"

Rudy felt the blood drain from his face. Murder-suicide, he thought.

4.

"Look, I'm sorry, I didn't know, okay?"

For the first time, Rudy wished his project involved electricity. That would make it easier to kill his roommate in the middle of the Science Festival without attracting suspicion.

"It just seemed like such a boyfriend thing to do, you know? I mean, I live with two of them. Boyfriends, I mean. And you've got all the classic mannerisms — ignoring other people, looking all dreamy and distant, and talking about your girlfr — uh, significant other all the time."

Phil was quite possibly the only person Rudy had ever met who could take sullenness for lovesickness. It might have been funny that he'd gotten things so horribly wrong, if he hadn't stumbled upon something that Rudy was trying very hard not to think about.

"Don't you have a project to explain?" Rudy asked him, watching the judges drift from one booth to the next.

Phil sighed, and wandered back to his table just in time to describe the dynamics of watermelon-based solvents to a group of bewildered officials.

5.

When the phone rang that night, Rudy was busy pretending to be part of his bed, so Phil answered it.

"It's for you," Phil said. Rudy didn't move. "I think it's Mike."

Rudy snaked a hand out from under the covers to grab the receiver. Distantly, he registered the sound of the hotel door closing behind his roommate.

"Hello?"

"Rudy," said Mike.

"Yes," said Rudy.

The moment stretched into awkward silence.

"I don't mind, you know," Mike blurted.

"Oh," said Rudy. He paused. "I don't mind, either."

"Good," said Mike.

Rudy lay there stupidly for a moment and listened to Mike breathe. Maybe Phil didn't have to die after all.

Phil returned to the room about an hour later. Rudy sat on the edge of the bed and listened to his friend chatter.

"Honourable mention! Can you believe it? 'Most Creative'! Hey, when are you flying out in the morning?"

Rudy pulled out his plane tickets. "Ten-thirty, to Toronto."

Phil shuffled through his scattered belongings and found his own tickets. "Hey, me too! I guess it's cheaper to go through Toronto than direct to New York, huh? This is so cool! We're practically seat buddies!"

Rudy desperately hoped that airplane meals still came with little plastic knives.


End file.
